Global communications networks, such as, for example, the internet, have grown exponentially and, as such, information available via global communications networks have also grown. As the internet has gained popularity to become one of the largest computer networks in existence to connect the world together, internet has become an important vehicle for users to obtain and use information, knowledge, social connections and tool facilities.
As a way of revenue generation and audience control, some contents or services delivered via global communications networks require subscription for accesses. As a result, end users are required to subscribe at each individual subscription source they intend to access. To access the subscribed contents, end users are also required to sign in at each individual subscription based web site. Therefore it is cumbersome for end users to access subscribed contents from multiple subscription-based sources.
Furthermore, the effective cost per view may also be uneconomically high to those end users who only read the subscribed contents occasionally and sparsely, thus spontaneous readerships are discouraged by the subscription-based paid content serving model. In addition, an individual end user is also unlikely to subscribe at many paid content sources as the subscription cost adds up quickly. As a result, typical end users are limited to paid contents from a small selection of subscribed content sources, while the full revenue potential cannot be realized by paid subscription providers due to these aforementioned barriers that prevent large user base from being reached.